Great Moments in ResetEra History

[HaughtyFrank]

During the whole Cerium sale it was revealed that Resetera made about $700.000 ad revenue which was something that struck people as odd as for years Resetera had offered an "Era Clear" subscription where they claimed that the forum needed support and that he money "directly supports the community you love"

So Era was generating a cool half million dollars a year in profit? Hope everyone paying for Era Clear reads this.

I understand why there wasn't ever transparency about the finances of this place before now (and we're only seeing the numbers now because of the press release) but I wonder how previous discussions about moderation and the stress that mods are under as unpaid volunteers would have gone if everyone knew that the site was pulling so much profit.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/resetera-ownership-update.499677/post-75197571

This is cracking me up. Didn't even know it existed.

"As an Era Clear subscriber you can retain the cleanest possible browsing experience while taking pride in giving something back."

This site was clearly making plenty of money from ad revenue alone to cover server costs and then some. So why did Era Clear need to exist other than to line the owner's pockets? Why not just say so instead of floating across some platitude laden bullshit? I'm fine with being a member of a site that's owned by some dude, I've been an SomethingAwful member forever, but at least they are fairly transparent about it. This vague community-centric wording is shady as fuck and exploitative considering the circumstances in which this forum was created.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/resetera-ownership-update.499677/post-75236217

The issue isn't with the sale itself. But rather the rhetoric behind it, like take Era Clear for example, it was introduced as a way to keep the lights on, and we were told there wasn't enough revenue to pay the mods. But now we find out from another website that the site made 700K a year in ad revenue.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/resetera-ownership-update.499677/post-75207957

Then, without acknowledging the discussion, the mods sneakily changed the wording on subscription page to "Your support is appreciated"



Some time later, B-dubs finally acknowledged it and basically went... "Oops, we kind of forgot"

About Era Clear, it was offered early on when the site was new and ad revenue was just getting off the ground. The only time it was given any real push was after the 2.0 redesign, which cost a lot and I recall the hope was that subscriptions could help offset that, so the plug was added at the bottom of the site. After that it kind of became an afterthought and went untouched until now.

Honestly I don't think anyone remembered the wording on the subscription page and that was definitely a mistake and should have been changed. It's been adjusted.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/resetera-ownership-update.499677/post-75310227